Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.
Bioethicist Bruce Jennings examines the changing role of physicians in end-of-life care, from paternalistic decision maker to advisor-technician and half-way back.
The organ transplantation system is viewed as one of our most equitable health care services, but poor patients are effectively excluded by policy that denies Medicaid coverage of post-transplant immunosuppressant medication.
When evaluating the developments and complications of a marginally viable premature infant, physicians and parents must work together to decide on treatment that is in the infant’s best interest.
Physicians should be aware of the level of emotional distress and suffering that a patient is experiencing as a result of his or her illness and incorporate that into the patient's treatment plan.
Physicians do not have to give therapies or perform procedures that they judge to be futile and Catholic patients have the moral right to determine what is extraordinary or ordinary care.
Variations among physicians in diagnosis and X-ray interpretation, the percentages of which have remained essentially unchanged for five decades, raise serious ethical concerns.